“And one of the lessons I learned was that fear is respect.”
“ I’ve mentioned before how I became an expert liar... it did not happen in a vacuum. I learned from the best.”
“ I wanted them to fear us. To fear me. Yes, I’ll admit it, I wanted my name to ring in their ears, to hurt their brains. I didn’t care about fame, but I cared about bringing dread into their hearts.”
If I were Tya, quotes like these would make it hard for me to believe my father was less monstrous as the world made him out to be. But at the same time, this letter may still manage to tempt me into believing him.
Exactly! There's a lot of ambiguity in that letter. He's trying to be honest, to explain his life, so that his daughter has all the context, but he can't help being himself, and there are things like that that just slip through. The fact that he calls himself an 'expert liar' also casts shadows upon everything he says.
This is why I love first-person narratives. It's just one perspective, but you can never know how accurate it is. Is the person being truthful? Do they *think* they are being truthful, but biases taint their words? Have they been manipulated into thinking what they think or behaving the way they behave? So many possible layers...
“And one of the lessons I learned was that fear is respect.”
“ I’ve mentioned before how I became an expert liar... it did not happen in a vacuum. I learned from the best.”
“ I wanted them to fear us. To fear me. Yes, I’ll admit it, I wanted my name to ring in their ears, to hurt their brains. I didn’t care about fame, but I cared about bringing dread into their hearts.”
If I were Tya, quotes like these would make it hard for me to believe my father was less monstrous as the world made him out to be. But at the same time, this letter may still manage to tempt me into believing him.
Exactly! There's a lot of ambiguity in that letter. He's trying to be honest, to explain his life, so that his daughter has all the context, but he can't help being himself, and there are things like that that just slip through. The fact that he calls himself an 'expert liar' also casts shadows upon everything he says.
This is why I love first-person narratives. It's just one perspective, but you can never know how accurate it is. Is the person being truthful? Do they *think* they are being truthful, but biases taint their words? Have they been manipulated into thinking what they think or behaving the way they behave? So many possible layers...
Thanks for the comment!